One of the tough parts of running a business is deciding when to put more effort into something and when to not. After a lot of internal debate, we've decided to stop posting editorial content on the PFR blog.

This obviously has nothing to do with the quality of the content produced by our writers (Chase, Jason Lisk, Doug Drinen, Neil or any of the guest writers). Their posts were phenomenal. I always looked forward to their posts and know you did to. A big thanks to them for making this such a vital place for football discussion and analysis. As a small company, focus is vital for our success, and we are choosing to focus our energy on pumping out as much statistical football data as possible and that means cutting back in other areas.

None of the existing content is going to go away. We'll keep it up here for as long as the site is open (which we intend to be a very long time). If you want more Chase Stuart (and I suspect you do), he will be writing at FootballPerspective.com for the rest of the year, and if you would like to contact him, he's available at Chase@Pro-Football-Reference.com.

Here's this week's article, comparing the equally brilliant but totally different wide receivers, Calvin Johnson and Wes Welker. Together, they have a chance to take down each of the main receiving records in football history. My take: Welker has a legitimate chance to break the receptions record, Johnson has a small but not impossibly small chance of breaking the touchdowns mark, and it would take a miracle for Welker to challenge the receiving yards mark.

Also: the Patriots offense is the best offense through four weeks in league history, with the second best offense being whoever is playing the Patriots. Mark Sanchez and the Jets test this logic on Sunday.

The Patriots, Jets, Eagles and Falcons entered the season with Super Bowl aspirations, but all struggled on Sunday. The failures of those teams ranged from unusual (the Jets rush defense had its worst game ever under Ryan) to scary (the Falcons just aren't that good, Mike Vick can't seem to stay healthy) to both (the Pats D is really bad, and New England lost its first game ever when leading by 21 points under Belichick). Pittsburgh and San Diego get dishonorable mentions here, for squeaking by the Little Disters of the Poor, Midwest edition.

A quick note to let everyone know that we've added single-game leaders to the leaderboard index, including performances from 1940-1959. This means you can see exactly where Tom Brady's Week 1 performance stands all-time:

These records are relatively complete for the 1940-2011 period -- although we only have full box scores for games since 1960, we also have data on all 300+ yard passing & 100+ yard rushing/receiving games going back to 1940. For more in-depth searches on post-1960 records, you should use the Play Index Game Finder tool, but this option is good for quickly looking up single-game records over a greater span of seasons.

The most famous comeback in history happened in Buffalo. The second largest comeback in regular season history occurred inside of Rich Stadium. The largest comeback in the NFL last season came via the right arm of Ryan Fitzpatrick. And now, Orchard Park was the site of another record, as the Bills became the first team to ever come back from 18+ deficits to win in consecutive weeks.

From 2002 to 2010, 22 teams overcame a deficit of 18 points or more to win a game. So far this season, the Bills have come from 18 and 21 points back to win in consecutive weeks. At the same time, the Vikings lost 17 and 20 point leads to Tampa Bay and Detroit. Jason Lisk thinks the craziness might continue, thanks to the ridiculous passing numbers so far this season (more to come on this in a future post).

From 1945 to 2010, there were 126 games where the winning team was trailing by more than 17 points at some point in the game. While the Bills became the first team to win consecutive games after trailing by 18+ points, six other teams did that feat twice over the course of a season. In '96, Bill Parcells' Patriots did the trick against his former and future employer, and in the same stadium: New England trailed the Jets 21-0 in week 11 and the Giants 22-0 in week 17, but ended up winning both games. The '95 Colts came up one play shy of the Super Bowl, but began their never-say-die ways earlier in the season. Indianapolis won two divisions games 27-24, after trailing 24-3 in both games against the Jets and Dolphins. In 1983, the Falcons trailed the (you guessed it) Jets and Packers 21-0 over the course of five weeks, but won both games by six points.

On the other side of things, it's hard to envision a more anxiety-inducing three weeks than weeks six through eight of the 1987 season for Tampa Bay. Tampa Bay scored three first quarter touchdowns against the Chicago Bears, although failed to convert the PAT following the third touchdown. Tampa extended the lead to 26-14 in the third quarter, but ultimately fell 27-26. The next week, the Tampa defense held the Packers off the scoreboard in the first half. The Bucs extended the lead to 23-3 in the 4th quarter, before Green Bay scored two more touchdowns. Tampa held on for the victory. Then, against the Cardinals, the Buccaneers took a 28-3 lead into the fourth quarter. But the Cardinals scored four fourth quarter touchdowns to win the game, 31-28. Remember, folks: for every great comeback, there's an equal and opposite stomach punch.Read the rest of this entry »

As has many of you may have noticed over the past couple of weeks, the Elo Rater has been slightly off. This is due to both the inadvertent erasure of a DB table on my part (oops) and what appears to be some suspicious voting activity by a certain group of fans (you know who you are). In an effort to wipe the slate clean I have reset the database on purpose this time and repopulated it by running a million matchup simulations weighted towards picking the player with the higher career AV. This should give us a little better starting point instead of having everyone start as equals. To prevent ballot-stuffing, I have implemented a 200 vote per day limit -- I apologize if this keeps you from killing the entirety of your workday by making the agonizing choice between Hugh Green and Larry Hand, but I believe it's necessary.

Hat tip to my buddy Joe Bryant for this tidbit in his weekly Random Shot column (you can get this in your inbox by signing up here):

Here's what it's like to be a Seahawks fan these days. Seattle's possessions at Pittsburgh: punt, punt, punt, end of the half, punt, punt, punt, punt, surrendered on downs, punt.

We all know the Seahawks were shut out on Sunday, but that drive chart looked a little odd. Isn't it unusual to get shut out without committing a single turnover? That's a whole new level of ineptitude, I assumed. I was right: only 12 teams since the merger have gone double goose-egg in the points and turnovers column in the same game.

And even that is probably misleading. The '08 Titans game was the last game of the season, when the 13-2 Titans benched most of their starters (of course, so did the Colts). The Cleveland-Buffalo game from '07 took place during a snowstorm, as was the Steelers-Jets game in '03. That makes it just the fourth game in the last 30 years where a team didn't commit a turnover and still was shutout, and couldn't even come up with a good excuse.

Cam Newton and Tom Brady put up ridiculous numbers in week one and then did it again in week two.

The Lions had the biggest win in franchise history since.... well, the last big win in franchise history.

Teams are adding insult to injury when facing the Chiefs

Profiles in futility: the Andrew Luck sweepstakes began in earnest in week two. One team has been outscored by 79 points; another has lost double-digit halftime leads twice this season; a third has lost 16 of its last 19 road games, with every single loss coming by double digits. A fourth team has now lost 11 of 12 home games, while a fifth team gave the Cleveland Browns their second double-digit victory in their last 62 road games.

File this in the "everything is bigger in Texas, including the optimism" department. From a reader:

With what looks like a "in and out" type of year for Arian Foster, Ben Tate looks poised to be the 4th 1000 yard rusher on the Texans roster (joining Foster, Derrick Ward and Steve Slaton). How many teams have had 4 1000 yard rushers on their team?

213 players in NFL history have rushed for 1,000 yards in a season. Where would the 2011 Texans rank if Tate breaks the millenium mark?

In an effort to better serve our users, we've posted a feedback form on our overall company site, https://www.sports-reference.com.

In addition to your feedback, we are looking for a couple dozen volunteers to sign on for occasional, additional surveys and perhaps some early beta testing of new features. We are calling these volunteer groups Sports Reference User Boards. You can still give us feedback without having an interest in being on a user board.

Just got a message from Mike that I thought I'd pass along... The site is now fully updated for 2011, including player & team stats, boxscores, the Play Index, etc. -- everything that was updating on a regular basis last season is now up to date. In future weeks, we'll be updating the site each morning with stats from the previous day's games.

And as always, we welcome emails about site issues we may have missed, possible new features, or just to shoot the breeze.

When it comes to grading teams or analyzing games, I like to do so by looking at past performance and key statistical indicators. Objectivity is the name of the game. After one week, though, that's not really an option. So I figured I'd change course and, if you guys don't mind, shoot straight from the gut, giving my thoughts on each of the 16 games this weekend. (If you guys do mind, that's why this was placed in the 'totally useless' category.) I may not even do this next week, but that won't stop me from structuring this article in such a way to make it look like an every week column.

Games I like

Seattle @ Pittsburgh (-14.5): As everyone knows, the Seahawks are running into a buzzsaw this week. Cross-country road trip traveling west to east, 1:00 game, and against an angry and focused Steelers team. The last time Seattle went to Pittsburgh was four years ago, with that game also scheduled with a 1:00 kickoff. Coincidentally, 2007 was also the last time the Seahawks were respectable (SRS score of +1.8; they've had an SRS score of -7.5 or worse every year since then). That game was still an ugly 21-0 Pittsburgh victory, and I expect the same on Sunday. SRS said Pittsburgh was 19.6 points better than Seattle last year, which roughly translates to a 24 point-line, in my opinion, given the location and time of the game. Pittsburgh looked terrible against Baltimore, but I'm more than willing to give the Steelers the benefit of the doubt. Pittsburgh won't have 7 turnovers again this week, and while Vegas is trying to elicit action on the Seahawks thanks to that extra half-point on the line, I'm not falling for it. Pittsburgh covers and wins easily.

Kansas City @ Detroit (-9): Nine points is a lot for Detroit to give: the Lions haven't been favored by as much as a touchdown since week 17 of the 2000 season. On the other hand, most of those games were started by someone other than Matthew Stafford. The Lions had a very difficult schedule in 2010, while the Chiefs had an easy one; as a result, Detroit's SRS grade was 2.6 points higher than Kansas City's in 2010. Tack on HFA, and a line of 9 isn't unreasonable given what we saw in week one. Jamaal Charles indoors could be scary, but I don't like anything that's going on in Kansas City. The Lions should win this one easily -- although I can't say I'm not frightened at the prospect of taking the Lions.

Once again, Pro-Football-Reference.com will be teaming up with the New York Times and the New York Times' Fifth Down Blog. Every Tuesday on the Fifth Down blog and every Wednesday in print, we'll be running a weekly article discussing trends and statistical in the NFL.

As good as Seattle looked on Sunday, the evidence isn't very compelling that they're going to look more like they did in week 1 than they did for most of 2009. It's tempting to think that this is the sign of a new era in Seattle, but it's more likely a sign of the same old era in San Francisco.

But I'm slightly more optimistic about the Bills, in part because they really weren't that bad last season. As I wrote for the Fifth Down:

Buffalo had the hardest schedule in the A.F.C. last season, while the Chiefs had the conference’s most forgiving slate of opponents. According to Pro-Football-Reference, the difference between the Bills’ and the Chiefs’ schedules was worth, on average, 7.5 points per week. Consider this: both franchises went winless in 2010 against teams with 10 or more wins (Buffalo, 0-9; K.C. 0-2, including playoffs). Each team won 75 percent of its games against teams with six or fewer wins (Buffalo 3-1; K.C. 6-2). Against teams with seven to nine wins, the Bills went 1-1 with Fitzpatrick at quarterback (1-2 over all), while the Chiefs went 4-3.

Sports Reference is all about providing information where and when you need it as quickly and as easily as possible. We are pleased to now offer a mobile version of Pro-Football-Reference.com optimized for the most common mobile devices. https://m.pfref.com/Read the rest of this entry »

A few years ago, Doug noted that the average starting quarterback is worth 2.3 points, or about a win per season. A useful starting point, but no one has ever confused Manning with an 'average starting quarterback.'

Brian Burke says that the entire Colts passing offense -- of which Manning is the central figure -- is worth about 3.8 wins per season.

I'm less optimistic than most. I'm not going out on a limb if I tell you that the Colts are going to implode, but I think that's what's going to happen. If Manning is gone for 16 games, I would probably take the "under" even at 6 wins.Read the rest of this entry »

What should we expect from the Jets this year? New York has appeared in the AFC Championship Game in each of the past two seasons, but two bad halves (second against Indianapolis, first against Pittsburgh) prevented the Jets from making the Super Bowl. Every year with Rex Ryan is a "Super Bowl or bust" type of season: do the Jets have what it takes to meet those expectations in 2011?

Vegas views the Jets as one of the league's contenders: with a projection of 10 wins, the Jets land in the top quarter of the league. The odds say New England is the favorite, with the Steelers slightly behind the Patriots, and the Jets, Chargers and Ravens just behind Pittsburgh to win the AFC. Those five teams are the class of the conference, now that there's a Peyton Manningless-Indianapolis.

Most observers put the Jets in that 3-5 range among the AFC's heavyweights. But a full preview of the 2011 Jets should start by taking a look at both the 2009 and 2010 editions.

2009 vs. 2010 Jets

The 2009 Jets shocked a lot of people by getting to the AFC Championship Game; after all, the Jets started the season 7-7. New York flipped the script in 2010, starting the year 9-2, the second best start in franchise history. But the records belie their reality: the 2009 Jets were a bit better than their 9-7 record while the 2010 Jets may not have been as good as their 11-5 mark.Read the rest of this entry »

For the uninitiated, this is a ROM of the original NES Tecmo Super Bowl, featuring the game's original graphics/sounds but with 32 teams and updated 2011 rosters. And, as always, you'll need an NES emulator to run the game. Have fun!

The Hall of Fame seniors committee named Dick Stanfel and Jack Butler on Wednesday as finalists for election in the class of 2012. To be elected, they need the same 80 percent support as the modern era finalists when the full selection committee meets in Indianapolis on Feb. 4, the day before Super Bowl 46. A few thoughts about the nominees:

Although his playing career lasted only seven seasons, Dick Stanfel left his mark as one of the finest and most consistent offensive linemen of his time. In an era that valued technique over brute strength, Stanfel was fundamentally sound enough to be elected first team All-Pro five times and to be named to the N.F.L.’s all-decade team of the 1950s....Read the rest of this entry »